Cloud Storage for Everyone

2014 was the year when cloud storage stopped being a novelty and became a useful tool for all computer owners. I have become more productive in the past year because of the ease of having all my data with me wherever I go.

At the beginning of the year, 5 to 10 gigabytes of online file storage space was standard and 100 gigabytes was something to brag about. Only the moderately wealthy could afford 100 gigabytes of online data storage on January 1, 2014.

Then, in March, Google cut the price of a terabyte (1000 gigabytes) on Google Drive to $10 a month. Microsoft soon responded by including a terabyte on OneDrive with every subscription to Office 365, even with the $70-a-year Personal subscriptions. Dropbox lowered its prices in August to $9.99 per month for one terabyte of storage space and even a bit cheaper if the account was paid in advance: $99.99 per year ($8.33 per month).

As if that was not cheap enough, late in the year Microsoft removed all storage limits from OneDrive and OneDrive for Business accounts for anyone with an Office 365 subscription. That’s right, unlimited online storage space.

At the moment, the biggest hurdle to actually using all that storage is bandwidth. Even on a relatively fast connection in the United States, it can take weeks to upload a terabyte of data.

The availability of safe and secure online storage available at very low prices has changed the way I work forever. My personal backups are in Google Drive with additional copies backed up on Dropbox and on Amazon Glacier to make sure everything remains available in case Google Drive ever becomes unavailable for some reason. Yes, I have backups to my backups. I suggest you do something similar also.

I haven’t given up local backups, of course, because old habits die hard. I also keep backups of every file that ever existed on my Macintosh systems by using Apple’s TimeMachine backup software and external hard drives that plug into each Mac. That includes my laptop and the two iMac desktop systems I have at my two locations.

In the not-so-distant future, we’ll marvel at the old-fashioned idea that people used to keep terabytes of data on big hard drives where they were subject to hardware failures, fires, floods, and other things that destroy such drives.

8 Comments

I have my stuff online. Terrified at the thought of losing it (and because i’m using chromeos), I cant do automated backups to my computer so I needed to backup all my stuff online. Fortunately cloudHQ is my saviour backing up from cloud to cloud.

Dick,
Back in “the day” when the cloud was just a beginning buzz word I always poo-pooed the phrase as I had been using that type of storage and email for years. Now that’s it’s practically necessary I cannot upload any materials due the the barely-over-modem speeds that is the AT&T infrastructure to my house.

Maybe, one day I’ll be able to experience “cloud storage” and a faster internet from AT&T, but I doubt that I’ll live that long

Keith, I agree. I use Carbonite and, with my internet speed leaving my computer on 24/7, it took nearly 9 months to upload my files, about 200 gb. It’s sad that in much of the US, our internet speed is significantly below that of Estonia! So I still use two local external hard drives for backup, as well.

If you have Amazon Prime, you get unlimited storage in their cloud drive. The price for Amazon Prime is currently $99 a year and you get free shipping on many/most items on Amazon and can stream many movies and TV shows for free. There are probably other services too, but those are the ones we use. https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/primephotos

I think the whole credit goes to Google because it first reduced the prices of 1TB cloud storage. I think cloud storage should be more cheaper than now because it’s the best way to keep data safe. It’s better to have a Online backup of data instead of paying hundreds or dollars to anyone for recovering your data.

Many of the cloud service providers offer terabytes of space for modest fees, typically much less than the price of purchasing a hard drive. For instance, Amazon Glacier offers UNLIMITED FILE STORAGE SPACE for $0.01 per gigabyte.

He has been involved in genealogy for more than 35 years. He
has worked in the computer industry for more than 50 years in hardware,
software, and managerial positions. By the early 1970s, Dick was already
using a mainframe computer to enter his family data on punch cards. He
built his first home computer in 1980.